LOCKED AWAY

Stories from women behind bars

The women in Theodora Skipitares's new puppet play aren't bad; they're just built that way. Skipitares, who boasts a 25-year career of remarkable and rigorous puppet theater, bases her latest piece, The Traveling Players Present Women of Troy, on reminiscences of women incarcerated on Rikers Island. (This continues her interest in women in prison, first explored in Body of Crime I and II.) Skipitares melds these testimonies with text from Euripides' play about Troy's conquered consorts: Helen, Hecuba, Cassandra, and Andromache. Using myriad techniques—bunraku puppets, rod puppets, shadow puppets, and video projection—Skipitares suggests that, from the mythic past to the present day, the realities of female imprisonment have not much changed.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Starts: Oct. 8. Continues through Oct. 25, 2009